That constituency has been mostly ignored by Reagan, Bush, and Bush after having been instrumental in their elections. I don't see much reason it would be otherwise for McCain. (Didn't we just have this discussion?)
Yes, now that you mention it. But I see now another area of disagreement. You focus, almost exclusively, on personalities without seeing the way they are hedged by parties, movements, institutions. McCain loses a great deal of the "McCainness" you see (we do disagree about this, of course) because he will be hedged by all sorts of competing social structures. And the furthest right of the Rep Party will come away from the election, should he be elected, with more power.
And the new McCain, the McCain you claim not to have seen, has deferred, extensively, to that wing of the party in the past two years. I don't see any reason for him to change his behavior as they flexed their newly charged up muscles after an election they thought they won for him. |
